Performance, Consent, and Coercion: Coaches as Institutional Intermediaries Under the House v. NCAA Settlement

Using the House v. NCAA settlement as a case, the authors apply unconscionability as an analytic lens for examining meaningful choice within a governance structure that is formally voluntary for some institutions yet operationally constraining once adopted. Current NCAA coaches’ accounts are organized around four recurring themes: roster compression, compensation spillover into recruiting, scholarship allocation triage, and transfer and retention pressure. The analysis illustrates why governance effects cannot be assessed only at the level of formal institutional choice as college athletes encounter the settlement through decisions made by coaches whose discretion is real but bounded by institutional, conference, and NCAA rules and regulations. We contend that treating coaches as institutional intermediaries clarifies how structural constraints become individualized consequences and why meaningful consent in collegiate athletics depends on where decision authority is located throughout the governance hierarchy.